Rio+20: Ideas for culture

From the 4th until the 6th of June 2012 the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or Rio+20 will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It has been 20 years since the first Earth Summit took place and the international community’s attention towards the Rio+20 Summit is growing steadily.
In order to influence the documents for the negotiations, activists and stakeholders have the possibility to participate and send proposals to an „idea box“ that the Secretariat of the Rio+20 Conference has established. The deadline for these submissions is the 1st of November.
Then the Secretariat will elaborate a compilation of the proposals that will be the basis for the zero draft in the negotiations at the Rio+20 Conference.
UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments), the world organization of cities, is preparing a contributions document, which will include (among other issues) the idea of making culture the fourth pillar of sustainable development. The Committee on Culture has been invited to participate in internal meetings to prepare UCLG’s document. The Agenda 21 for culture (2004) and the Policy Statement of Mexico on “Culture: the Fourth Pillar of Sustainable Development” (2010) build the basis for this process.

In order reinforce the message of the UCLG’s Committee on culture, cultural activists, networks and stakeholders on the relation between culture and sustainable development are encouraged to send a message with their ideas to the Secretariat too. The UCLG offers a document that can be used or can give ideas for preparing such a submission. This document can be found here: http://www.agenda21culture.net/docs_circulars/Ideas%20for%20Rio+20%20-%20ENG.pdf
Ideas can be submitted to the Secretariat of the Rio20+ Conference here:
http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=83

For further information see
http://www.bcncultura.com/agenda21cultura/circular/circular54.html
or contact the Secretariat of the Committee on culture: agenda21cultura@bcn.cat and +34 933 161 009

By Janna

Janna was BA-student in cultural sciences at the Leuphana University Lueneburg, and did a 5-months internship at Cultura21 in the framework of the Leuphana PLUS program. Janna war Studentin der Angewandten Kulturwissenschaften an der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg und absolvierte im Rahmen des Leuphana Plus Programms ein fünfmonatiges Praktikum bei Cultura21.